Retry

Federal prosecutors said Monday that they would retry former savings and loan boss Charles Keating Jr. for securities fraud, more than two years after a judge overturned his convictions on the same charges. Keating, whose Lincoln Savings and Loan became a symbol for the crash of the thrift industry in the late 1980s, was found guilty of securities fraud and other charges in 1993, only to have the trial judge overturn those convictions because of a possibly tainted jury.

Stinging from a major setback, prosecutors Thursday said they have not decided whether to retry a former Florida Warlocks biker on an attempted murder charge. A Seminole County jury acquitted David Maloney, 54, of Longwood, about 11 p.m. Wednesday on two counts of second-degree murder and one count of first-degree attempted murder stemming from a shootout at a Winter Springs VFW hall that left three dead. But that six-member jury couldn't decide what to do about a second attempted murder count.

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Frustrated that former President Suharto escaped trial because of ill health, Indonesia's reformist president demanded that the corruption case be reopened under an honest judge, news reports said Friday. "I have asked the acting supreme court justice to look for a judge who is clean, firm and not a judge who can be bought," President Abdurrahman Wahid said.

The chief prosecutor in Seminole County today said his office will retry Laura Booker, the Sanford mom arrested after she stepped onto a school bus and refused to get off because the driver would not talk to her about bullying problems. Booker, 40, stood trial this week on charges of trespassing and resisting arrest. A jury deliberated more than nine hours over two days before a judge yesterday declared a mistrial. Today, Pat Whitaker, chief of operations for the State Attorney's Office in Seminole, said his office has no interest in sending Booker to jail, but she broke the law, he said, and public officials need to protect children on school busses.

James Richardson not only didn't get a fair trial, but he probably was wrongfully accused of poisoning his seven children, and the state will not retry the murder case against him, a special prosecutor said Friday.''It's total and absolute vindication,'' said attorney Mark Lane of Washington, who worked for 21 years to free Richardson from prison.In court papers filed Friday in Arcadia, Special Prosecutor Janet Reno and staff criticized the way Richardson's case was investigated 22 years ago. The motion concludes:- That a totally inadequate and incomplete investigation was conducted into the deaths of the seven children.

The government has decided not to pursue bribery charges against a former aerospace executive who was the only defendant to go to trial from a 19-month FBI sting involving NASA. U.S. Attorney Gaynelle Griffin Jones said Friday that her office was reluctant to expend resources for a second trial of Dale Brown after his three-week trial in June ended with a deadlocked jury. Brown was caught in a sting operation that targeted NASA contractors and employees. He was accused of paying $500 to a Defense Department official to influence the awarding of a $220,000 contract.

Civil litigation and lawyers' fears knocked O.J. Simpson off the air Wednesday night, depriving viewers and NBC News of a highly publicized interview that promised to be one of the most-watched events in TV history.Citing NBC News' no-holds-barred interview strategy, Simpson withdrew from a Dateline NBC special.He issued a statement, read by his attorney Johnnie Cochran: ''It has become clear that NBC has, perhaps in an attempt to appease the first public viewpoints, concluded that this would be a time and an opportunity to retry me.''NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw, whowas to conduct the interview with Katie Couric, announced Simpson's cancellation in an afternoon news bulletin.

LIMA, Peru - Peru decided to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the Organization of American States' human-rights court Thursday after the tribunal ruled the country must retry four people convicted of treason. The 66-33 vote by the government-controlled Congress angered human-rights groups.

MISTRIAL IN MURDER TRIAL. Saying the jury was hopelessly deadlocked, a judge Thursday declared a mistrial in the case of British car dealer Harvey Rader, 46. He is accused of the slayings of an Israeli immigrant and his family of three who disappeared nearly seven years ago. Prosecutors said they would probably retry the case. The jury had been deliberating since Aug. 2. Rader, the former owner of Mr. Motor (London) in the Los Angeles suburb of Reseda, was accused of killing Los Angeles businessman Sol Salomon, 35, his wife and two children in October 1982.

GROVELAND – Allen Sherrod will give it another go today at trying to break the Guinness World Records mark for the longest scuba dive in open fresh water. The 44-year-old Groveland resident plans to dive into Lake David at noon and remain underwater for at least five days or until just after noon on Saturday. The current record of five days is held by Jerry Hall, set in 2004 in Tennessee. This will be Sherrod's second attempt at the record. On Sept. 16, he resurfaced after spending just over two days underwater because he was suffering from flu-like symptoms and became increasingly sicker.

PALM BAY -- Inside a cozy home on a quiet street, freedom looks like this: Nephews, brothers and sisters crowd inside, chattering and hugging and smiling. People hunt for coats and jackets. Someone makes plans to go to dinner to celebrate. Amid it all stood 6-foot-4 Bill Dillon, hours after he learned he was finally free of the murder charge that led to his imprisonment for 27 years. "I'm just glad they finally dropped the charges," Dillon, 49, said as his relatives crowded around him. On Wednesday, Brevard-Seminole State Attorney Norm Wolfinger said he no longer would pursue murder charges against Dillon in the killing of James Dvorak.

TAMPA -- Despite a failure to convict in the terrorism-related trial of Sami Al-Arian, the fired University of South Florida professor still faces an uncertain future while incarcerated without bail. The federal government has an immigration "detainer," or hold, on Al-Arian -- a measure in place since his 2003 arrest on criminal terrorism-support charges. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency on Wednesday said it could take him into custody any time after his criminal proceedings end. "We feel we have clear and convincing evidence to put him into removal proceedings," said Pam McCullough, an ICE spokeswoman.

LIMA, Peru -- This nation will confront a frightening chapter of its history today when it once again attempts to retry imprisoned Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman, who last year caused a mistrial with communist-inspired courtroom antics. Guzman's lawyer says the man who for 12 years spearheaded a bloody, ongoing rebellion against the government "is aware" he will receive the same life sentence meted out in 1992 by a secret military justice system that was later deemed unconstitutional by Peru's highest court.

LIMA, Peru -- The founder of Peru's Maoist Shining Path insurgency raised a defiant fist in court Friday as the government retried him on terrorism charges a decade after he was sentenced to life in prison by a secret military court. That sentence against Abimael Guzman was overturned last year by Peru's Constitutional Tribunal, which declared the secret military court unconstitutional. Prosecutors filed new charges against Guzman and other convicted rebels in civilian court. Guzman, 69, mastermind of a bloody insurgency initiated in 1980 by a movement that envisioned a classless utopia, was captured in 1992 and sentenced by a secret military tribunal to life in prison without parole.

TAVARES -- Joshua Walsh fired the fatal shot that left a Leesburg kindergartner dead last year after a 20-mile, two-county, road-rage chase. He was found guilty of murder in February and faced a mandatory sentence of 25 years to life in prison. Now, that could change. Circuit Judge Hale R. Stancil on Wednesday signed a 25-page order granting a new trial for Walsh, 24. "This court reached a conclusion that the progress of the trial presented a number of issues that . . . were not fully examined . . . and that some actions undertaken by participants in the trial could be questioned in terms of legal sufficiency or potential error," the judge wrote.

LIMA, Peru -- This nation will confront a frightening chapter of its history today when it once again attempts to retry imprisoned Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman, who last year caused a mistrial with communist-inspired courtroom antics. Guzman's lawyer says the man who for 12 years spearheaded a bloody, ongoing rebellion against the government "is aware" he will receive the same life sentence meted out in 1992 by a secret military justice system that was later deemed unconstitutional by Peru's highest court.

NEW YORK -- A federal jury convicted a former policeman of perjury Tuesday but deadlocked on more serious civil-rights charges stemming from the 1997 police torture of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima in a stationhouse bathroom. Charles Schwarz, 36, faces up to five years in prison. The jury deliberated for six days before telling U.S. District Judge Reena Raggi it was deadlocked on the two civil-rights charges and another perjury count. Prosecutors could seek to retry Schwarz.

MOSCOW -- The Russian Supreme Court ordered a physicist Wednesday to stand trial again on espionage charges, overturning a jury's acquittal that had been celebrated as a triumph of Russia's post-Soviet legal reform. Human-rights groups and legal experts said the highest court's intervention in Valentin Danilov's case demonstrates the monumental task ahead to fully reform a judicial branch still permeated by political pressure and corruption more than a decade after the Soviet collapse.

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. -- A man whose child-molestation conviction was overturned after he served 20 years in prison was released from custody Tuesday, his 61st birthday. "Oh, my. I don't know. This is wonderful. It's just amazing," John Stoll said after taking a bow and thanking his lawyers. His first wish was for a steak dinner. Stoll walked free hours after prosecutors told Judge Lee P. Felice that they would not seek to retry him, now that most of his accusers have recanted. Felice dismissed the 17 counts of child molestation of which he was convicted in 1985.